Below we have an analysis of the current evolutionary profile of the Human Family. Within the perspective of Perennial Philosophy, a very interesting view of this evolutionary profile can be found in a general description of the famous clairvoyant Charles W. Leadbeater concerning the Causal Bodies of humanity in our time. This overview implies some repetitions of facts already discussed in other posts, however, given the importance of this topic within the general message of this site, these repetitions can serve to emphasize what is intended to communicate.
Remember that, as we see in another post on this site by the well-known clairvoyant Geoffrey Hodson, “the conditions of the causal body is a true register – the only true register – of the growth the man, of the stage of evolution to which he has attained.” The level of development of these vehicles, therefore, faithfully reveals the profile of the real psycho-spiritual development reached by the Human Family in its current evolutionary stage. Let us now proceed to the description of C.W. Leadbeater:
“The third sub-plane, the fifth heaven, is the lowest of the arupa sub-planes, and this is also by far the most populous of all the regions with which we are acquainted, for here are present almost all the sixty thousand millions of souls who are said to be engaged in the present human evolution – all, in fact, except the comparatively small number who are capable of functioning on the second and first sub-planes. Each soul (or Higher Self) is there represented by an ovoid form – at first a mere film, colourless and almost invisible, of most tenuous consistency; but, as the ego develops, this body begins to show a shimmering iridescence like a soapbubble, colours playing over its surface like the changing hues made by sunlight on the spray of a waterfall.
(…) it becomes as its evolution proceeds a radiant globe of flashing colours, its high vibrations sending ripples of changing hues over its surface – hues of which earth knows nothing – brilliant, soft and luminous beyond the power of language to describe. (…)
All these causal bodies are filled with living fire drawn from a higher plane, with which the globe appears to be connected by a quivering thread of intense light, vividly recalling to the mind the words of the stanzas of Dzyan, “the Spark hangs from the Flame by the finest thread of Fohat”; and as the soul grows and is able to receive more and more from the inexhaustible ocean of the Divine Spirit which pours down through the thread as a channel, the latter expands and gives wider passage to the flood, till on the next sub-plane it might be imaged as a water-spout connecting earth and sky, and higher still as itself a great globe through which rushes the living spring, until the causal body seems to melt into the inpouring light. (…)
(…) The immense majority, whether in or out of the body, are but dreamly semiconscious, though few are now in the condition of mere colourless films; those who are fully awake are marked and brilliant exceptions, standing out amid the less radiant crowds like stars of the first magnitude, and between these and the least-developed are ranged every variety of size and beauty of colour – each thus representing the exact stage of evolution at which he has arrived.
The majority are not yet sufficiently definite, even in such consciousness as they possess, to understand the purpose or the laws of the evolution in which they are engaged; they seek incarnation in obedience to the impulse of the Cosmic Will, and also to Tanha, the blind thirst for manifested life – a desire to find some region in which they can feel and be conscious of living.
For in their earlier stages these undeveloped souls cannot feel the intensely rapid and piercing vibrations of the highly-refined matter of their own plane; the strong and heavier matter of the physical plane are the only ones that can evoke any response from them. So it is only upon the physical plane that they feel themselves to be alive at all, and this explains their strong craving for rebirth into earth-life. Thus for a time their desire agrees exactly with the law of their evolution. They can develop only by means of these impacts from without, to which they are gradually roused to respond, and in this early stage they can receive them only in earth-life. By slow degrees their power of response, and is awakened first to the higher and finer of the physical vibrations, and still more slowly to those of the astral plane. (…)
At a later stage, but always by the same process of learning to respond to impacts from without, the souls learn to centre their consciousness in the mental body – to live in and according to the mental images which they have formed for themselves, and so to govern their emotions by the mind. Yet further on the long, long road the centre shifts to the causal body, and the souls realize their true life. When that time comes they will be found upon a higher sub-plane than this, and the lower earthly existence will be no longer necessary for them; but for the present we are thinking of the less evolved majority, who still put forth as groping, waving tentacles into the ocean of existence the personalities which are themselves on the lower planes of life, though they are as yet in no sense aware that these personalities are the means whereby they are to be nourished and to grow. They see nothing of their past or their future, not being yet conscious on their own plane.
Still, as they are slowly drawing in experience and assimilating it, there grows up a sense that certain things are good to do and others bad, and this expresses itself imperfectly in the connected personality as the beginning of a conscience, a feeling of right and wrong: and gradually, as they develop, this sense more and more clearly formulates itself in the lower nature, and becomes a less inefficient guide of conduct.
(…) the most advanced souls of this sub-plane develop to a point at which they are engaged in studying their past, tracing out the causes set going in it, and learning much from the retrospection, so that the impulses sent downwards become clearer and more definite, and translate themselves in the lower consciousness as firm convictions and imperative intuitions. (…)
From the densely thronged region which we have been considering we pass into a more thinly populated world, as out of a great city into a peaceful countryside; for at the present stage of human evolution only a small minority of individuals have risen to this loftier level where even the least advanced is definitely self-conscious, and also conscious of his surroundings. Able at least to some extent to review the past through which he has come, the soul on this level is aware of the purpose and method of evolution; he knows that he is engaged in a work of self-development and recognizes the stages of physical and post-mortem life through which he passes in his lower vehicles.
The personality with which he is connected is seen by him as part of himself, and he endeavours to guide it using his knowledge of the past as a store of experience from which he formulates principles of conduct, clear and immutable convictions of right and wrong. These he sends downs into his lower mind, superintending and directing its activities. While he continually fails in the earlier part of his life on this sub-plane to make the lower mind understand logically the foundations of the principles he impresses on it, he yet very definitely succeeds in making the impression, and such abstract ideas as truth, justice and honour become unchallenged and ruling conceptions in the lower mental life.
(…) While, however, he thus succeeds in guiding his lower vehicle, his knowledge of it and its doings is often far from precise and clear. He sees the lower planes but dimly, understanding their principles rather than the details, and part of his evolution on this plane consists of coming more and more consciously into direct touch with the personality which so imperfectly represents him below.
It will be understood from this that only such souls as are deliberately aiming at spiritual growth live on this plane, and they have in consequence become largely receptive of influences from the planes above them. The channel of communication grows and enlarges, and a fuller flood pours through. The thought under this influence takes on a singularly clear and peircing quality, even in the less developed, and the effect of this in the lower minds shows itself as a tendency to philosophic and abstract thinking. (…)
The first sub-plane, the most glorious level of the mental world, has but few denizens as yet from our humanity, for on its heights dwell none but the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion, and their initiated pupils. On the beauty of form and colour and sound here no words ca speak, for mortal language has no terms in which those radiant splendours may find expression. (…)
(…) From this highest level of the mental world the genius receives its illumination; here all upward efforts find their guidance. As the sun rays fall everywhere from one centre, and each body that receives them uses them after its nature, so from the Elder Brothers of the race fall on all souls the light and life which it is their function to dispense; and each uses as much as it can assimilate, and thereby grows and evolves. Thus, as everywhere else, the highest glory of the heavenly world is found in the glory of service, and they who have accomplished the mental evolution are the fountains from which flows strength for those who still are climbing.” (C.W. Leadbeater. The Devachanic Plane. pp. 114-125; emphasis added)
The greatest importance of this long clairvoyant description by C.W. Leadbeater for the context of this site’s message is that it gives us a very complete picture of the current evolutionary stage of humanity. It not only describes our Higher Selves at their different levels of development, but what is more important and rarer, it clearly describes the relative proportions of each of these levels of development within the total population. Such proportions find impressive experimental scientific corroboration in the research and works of Philip E. Converse, as well as in our studies and work What Is Wrong With Politics? Bases for a True Democracy.